


A Cold And Broken Hallelujah

by Angel Ascending (angel_in_ink)



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Gen, I'll Just Be Over Here Singing Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah, The Rest of the Might Nein Feature Also
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-02
Updated: 2018-05-02
Packaged: 2019-05-01 03:02:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,066
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14511099
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/angel_in_ink/pseuds/Angel%20Ascending
Summary: Falling was easy. Rising was harder.





	A Cold And Broken Hallelujah

**Author's Note:**

> So tonight on Talks Machina After Dark, Ashley accidentally revealed what flavor of aasimar she is. Naturally I had Feelings about this. 
> 
> She also revealed that Yasha is only 5 feet 11 inches, which doesn't roll off the tongue as much as seven feet tall does, but we'll make it work.

No one had said redemption was going to be easy, and Yasha wouldn’t have wanted it if it was. She had learned at a young age (taught by blood and pain and the weight of a sword in her hand) that nothing worthwhile was ever easy.

Falling had been easy, had happened so slowly, by inches. She hadn’t known she was falling until she fell. Until the light went away. Until the dreams stopped. There was a darkness in her heart now, a coldness, and she made them work for her. Her rages weren’t angry, weren’t hot. She was ice in winter, swinging a sword.

Falling was easy. Rising was harder.

The Stormlord had brought her out of a literal hell, it was true, but He was not a god of comfort, or of easy answers. If she did not have the strength to achieve her own salvation, then she did not deserve it. The darkness in her heart held lightning now, and her dreams were full of storms.

_“Pick a card_ , _” Molly says, smiling, fanning out his deck._

_Molly’s done a real reading for her before, a proper one. This isn’t serious, this is just them killing time before a show. She lets her hands hover over the cards, then draws one. They’ve known each other nearly half a year now, and she knows his cards almost as well as he does, she’s seen him do readings so many times. Still, she stares at the card she’s holding. The Bound Angel, a winged figure tied by the red strings of fate, reversed, falling instead of rising. Falling away from your destiny, instead of rising to meet it. Tragedy instead of triumph._

_Molly looks at the card, and up at her, grin fallen from his face because he knows, he knows what she is. He knew in that way he knew things sometimes, not memory, just knowledge bubbling out of his blood and into his brain. He reaches out and takes the card from her, gently._

_“That was then,” Molly says, and turns the card around, handing it back to her. Now the angel is rising. Rising towards destiny. Towards the light. “This is now.”_

Sometimes she can’t sleep for nightmares. She’s climbing a cliff that stretches above her, endless. Below is only darkness, she knows that without looking. The stone is slick with the blood of everyone she killed, and she’s always in danger of slipping back, sliding back. There’s a crack of thunder and the rain falls, washing away the blood, but the stone is no less slippery. It doesn’t make things easier, but it doesn’t make them harder either. Sometimes, in her nightmares, she falls, falls endlessly into the dark until she wakes up, silent and shaking.

Molly understands. Molly, who wakes from nightmares of clawing his way out of the earth, who chokes on the dirt from his dreams. Molly, who is working on his own redemption, even if he doesn’t know it, doesn’t say it. He doesn’t have memories of who he was, and Yasha knows this troubles him more than he lets on, that sometimes a smile can be armor, or a sword.

Sometimes in her dreams she has wings, sometimes she can fly, and she soars into the sky, looking for the light she lost. She wakes up from those dreams silent and shaking too, with tears running down her face. In her dreams her wings are like her hair, black feathers fading to gray, fading to white. Sometimes she can almost feel them in the moments after she wakes, the phantom weight of them on her back, the feathers brushing against her.

Yasha is fighting a group of cultists, the Mighty Nein fighting alongside her, and things aren’t looking great. She observes the group through the coldness of her rage, looks at her friends, at their blood on the ground. Blood everywhere. So much blood. She has to do something. She has to. She—

Pain, because nothing is easy, nothing should be easy, especially not the first time. Her back is on fire and she’s screaming and she had dreamed this, hadn’t she? A feeling like teeth in her back, and screaming? Is she screaming? Everyone is screaming. Why is everyone screaming? Yasha feels power flow through her, darkness and death, and when she swings her sword at the cult leader they scream and _rot_ , just fall to pieces, and the other cultists are running, but they don’t get very far.

Yasha turns back to the group, to people she calls friends, to the one she calls family, and they are staring at her, and they’re _afraid_. Afraid of _her._

Molly will tell her later about how her eyes went black, about her wings, huge and skeletal with a few feathers clinging to them, black and gray and white.

Above her the storm clouds rumble and the rain falls as lightning streaks across the sky. Yasha starts walking away, because what else can she do? She’s saved the lives of her friends and they’re afraid of her. She won the battle, but at what cost? Is this all she can be, just darkness and death? Is that all she is?

Yasha doesn’t know how long she walks before she goes to her knees, kneeling in the mud, turning her face towards the sky. She yells at the rain, at the thunder and lightning, screams frustration and rage and sorrow up into the clouds until her voice breaks, then bows her head, in prayer or defeat, she isn’t sure.

It’s Molly who comes to her first, because it would be him. He kneels, puts his arms around her, his forehead against hers. He doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t have to. Beau is right next to him a second later, an arm slung around both his shoulder and hers. Then it’s Jester on her other side, followed by Fjord, arms around each other and her. Caleb is next, just a hand on her shoulder, all the contact he can handle at the moment probably. Last but not least is Nott, who scrambles up onto Yasha’s shoulders. Yasha can feel Nott’s fingers in her hair and later she’ll find the little blue flowers Nott had placed there, for protection, for luck.

Falling had been easy. Redemption was harder, an uphill climb, but at least she didn’t have to do it alone.

**Author's Note:**

> For those of you who don't know, when Fallen aasimar pop their wings, everyone within ten feet has to make a save or they'll be afraid of you. Also, bonus necrotic damage on your next attack.
> 
> "Her back is on fire and she’s screaming and she had dreamed this, hadn’t she? A feeling like teeth in her back, and screaming?" This is yes a direct reference to my fic "Hungry Dreams."
> 
> The Bound Angel card shows up in "Indelible Ink." It's not Yasha's card currently, but it is very much her past card.
> 
> I'm angel-ascending over on Tumblr if you want to stop by and say hi!


End file.
